Dispatcher & Driver Harmony
Bette Garber
Contributing Editor
Why can't everybody just get along?" laments the U.S. president in the sci-fi spoof, Mars Attacks. His woefully understated response to alien-human warfare strikes a respondent chord in the subject of dispatcher/driver relations.
Do these two critical components in highway transport see each other as alien species, speaking different languages, focused on different goals? Not so, insists the dispatch manager at a busy East Coast LTL carrier.
"Everyone is going for the same target, the same result - to satisfy the customer - but by different paths."
We asked dispatchers, company drivers and owner-operators to tell us what they think are the biggest dispatcher/driver problems and how those situations might be improved. Interestingly, there were parallels: a mutual desire to hear a "thank you" from the other; bad communication on both sides concerning drivers' days off; agreement that something needs to be done about just-in-time shippers who load late but still want on-time delivery; and a general consensus that time on the road - as a driver or at least a passenger - helps dispatchers relate to drivers and their problems.
Here's what they had on their minds:
The Dispatchers
• Communictions is key. We spent a day talking to dispatchers for a medium-sized fleet whose mornings start with "buckle up and accelerate," and who say that "Job 1" is getting the loads out the gate on their way to the customers. Keeping freight movement fluid and on time is key. If anything interrupts the flow, the dispatcher needs to know.
"The willingness to communicate back and forth is what makes things work," says one. Not surprisingly, their biggest gripe is the failure of drivers to report delayed pickups and deliveries, problems en route, going short on hours and upcoming days off.
"It takes two to communicate," says a dispatcher routinely juggling 60 to 80 pickups on the board. "I have to know when a driver is empty. I'm already planning his next loads."
Adds another: "The driver doesn't want to tell me he can't meet the schedule. He is afraid we'll think he can't do the job. Rather than take the initiative to call in the delay, he'll bite his fingers, hoping it will come off soon. 'My truck is being detained' is an important message. If I know this, I can call the shipper and ask him to call the consignee. It's that line of communications that makes everything work."
At this carrier, drivers are expected to track their hours and keep the dispatcher informed of their duty status. When they don't, it sends a dispatcher's blood pressure soaring.
"This is not nursery school where we hold hands. Communications is part of the job," says a seasoned dispatcher with many years of OTR experience. "If someone lets me know he needs a couple of hours sleep, that's OK. I'll save something for him later. But if he waits until the last minute and is too tired to drive, then I have to find a switch and switch him. I've already planned the load. Any advance notice is very important, because we have to find a way to satisfy the customer."
Days off are another flash point. These dispatchers have a list somewhere on their desk of driver requests for days off, but it's easy to forget - until a driver reminds the dispatcher the day before he's supposed to be off.
A dispatch manager offers a solution: As the day gets close, the driver should post a reminder into the "comments" area of his daily messages, every day, until his dispatcher says "OK, I get it, you have Friday off."
Listening to drivers is also part of the job, says a seasoned desk jockey recently returned to the highway. "There are always going to be whining drivers and unjustified complaints, but you have to listen to them just the same. It's easy to become frustrated and hang up, but if you want productivity out of 'Joe Whiner,' you have to listen to him and treat him with respect."
• Attitude makes a difference. "Not every dispatch is a good one," a dispatcher notes, explaining how he handles a "bad" load. "I tell 'em 'I don't want to do this to you, but I have to.' I don't try to dress it up. Then I tell 'em how I will make it better. I promise I will remember the driver and owe him. And I will."
Overreaction is a frequent problem. "Some drivers are too quick to jump the gun," a dispatcher says, adding, "Sometimes we are a little quick on them, too. They can make a situation seem like a big disaster. They don't see the easy fix. Maybe they are late or a customer won't take load. They panic, call in frantically, when it just takes a call from dispatch to fix things."
Situations tend to escalate fastest with satellite messaging. One reason is the impersonal nature of the system. Putting frustration into glowing letters allows no personal shading of tone or inflection. Statements can seem harsher than intended and the agitation factor on both ends spins quickly out of control unless someone pulls in the reins.
We witnessed one situation where the driver was tired, almost out of hours, obviously working a short fuse. When told he could not take his load further north, he assumed the decision was personal and fired back an angry response. "I'M NO DAMM KID. STOP IT," he writes.
When written responses failed to calm him, the dispatcher messaged him to call the office so the disagreement can straightened out verbally.
"Attitude is everything," says the carrier's driver counselor. "The first page in our driver's manual is about attitude. "You can say what you need to say, if it's said with the right attitude."
"Communication breakdown occurs when a driver has set in his mind how he thinks things are going to work out," a dispatcher with a crewcut offers. His desk is neatly ordered, his inflection crisp and precise on the phone and off. "Maybe the load is not what he expected and doesn't fit his plan. The variable throws him and causes ill feelings. If anything, he needs to communicate his expectations on how a trip will go."
Tidying his desk papers reflexively, he adds, "It would be great to bring drivers into dispatch and let them see what goes on here, but that will never happen. Too expensive."
The fix: Every situation can't be altered to meet drivers' needs, dispatchers say. The highest earners are those who accept what happens, taking one thing at a time. If they're miserable about a load, they just deal with it.
• Experience helps. Among dispatchers interviewed, over-the-road experience ranged from brief ridealongs to 20-plus years of driving. Says one about his week on the road with a driver, "It was an eye opener. You see all the obstacles during the course of a day, cars parked in wrong places, fork lifts broken. You have more understanding. I would not do their job, nor they mine."
The Drivers
On one side is a mellow individual who always starts his conversation with his dispatcher, "How are you today?"
"They need someone to talk to, too" he points out. "They work on their own quite a bit." He carries "high dollar" loads and has a good relationship with his dispatcher. "It's an accepted part of the job that I have to support the dispatcher and vice versa," he says.
Directly opposite is a driver who claims, "[dispatch] couldn't care less about me or my safety. They have no regard for anybody's life, just as long as that load goes out. They won't put an illegal load on the Qualcomm. They just say, 'I need you to do me a favor.' If I do it, and something happens, it's my fault."
His dispatcher is an Army colonel in the reserves. He says he can't stand the guy and will probably leave soon because relations are so bad.
"I feel they [dispatchers] are in the middle, between us and management," one driver says. "If a driver goes to the dispatcher with a complaint, he may listen and even be concerned, but the dispatcher doesn't want to get in the middle and have to bring up the issue to management. He'd get stepped on. So he doesn't bother."
• Don't treat them like numbers. Drivers often complain that dispatchers "talk down to them," making them feel like they're "just a number."
An owner-operator team leased to a well-known express service put the "number issue" at the top of their complaint list. "Our carrier doesn't know who we are, no matter how many times we call, and we've been with them several years. You tell them your number and that's the way they treat us. Even someone you talk to many times."
Their suggestion: The company access number they input into their communications keyboard could be programmed to include their name, so when dispatchers pick up the call, their name is right in front of them.
• Pay attention to their needs. It's Saturday. This driver's home is in Tennessee but he's drinking coffee at a "drivers only" counter in northern Pennsylvania. He delivers into New York City on Monday, then has only one day to get back home for a doctor's appointment. His dispatcher knew this, he insists. He had requested the day off well ahead of time - asking for three days off after three weeks out.
"Dispatchers lose sight of drivers' human needs. They should be more aware of what's happening to their drivers," he says. "They say I can be off every 10 days, but I end up staying out a month. They just keep dispatching me."
"It would help if the dispatcher said 'thank you for a great job today,'" one grizzled road vet chimes in. "They are there to chew you out, but do they pat you on the back? If you can criticize us for being wrong, acknowledge us for being right or doing a good job. If you tell someone he's a screw-up, there is no goal to work toward."
• Know the ropes. "Put dispatchers on a truck for one or two weeks," a driver insists, "And get rid of college people and ex-military who don't know how long it takes to get around Chicago," protests another driver. Where he was formerly employed, he says, "Dispatchers had to have two years driving experience with that carrier before they could hit the desk."
Truckers seem to agree that ex-drivers make the best dispatchers. "Because of their experience, you don't need to explain," says one. "You can't b.s. them. They have heard it all and can fill in the blanks. They'll tell you, 'if a customer gets to you, call me and chew on me for awhile.'"
• Don't ignore messages. Drivers generally give high marks to dispatch communications via on-board hardware. However, some drivers report that their messages are not fully read or comprehended by the dispatcher and they feel that what they are saying doesn't count for much.
"We know they don't read them or, worse, they ignore them - like when we send in direction corrections and they aren't entered into the system," says the owner-operator team. "I understand they are busy, but there has to be communication. We have a big truck and don't like wandering around, looking for a place." Frequently they break carrier protocol and contact the consignee directly rather than flounder in "dispatch hell."
Their fix for this problem: Put in the changes right away and understand why they are important.
More Dealing With Drivers
